Feb 23, 2015 |
Today, we’ve swapped posts with Blessed and Beloved, a blog about the single life for Catholic women! This article was written by Michelle, one of the blog’s four foundresses, and originally published on the 14th of November 2014.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29: 11-13
I make plans. I have always made plans. I enjoy and get excited planning. Whether it is what I am doing this weekend or my childhood plans of going to Africa, living in an orphanage, or going to graduate school on the East coast, plans have directed me in life and given me security. For the most part too I have followed these plans believing they too were God’s plans for me. Plans gave me control and following them made me feel successful. They allowed me to be able to share with people where I was heading in life and look like I knew what I was doing. If you know me I am always doing something and usually many somethings. Just having plans to have plans though is where things get dangerous.
But God’s plans are not our plans. Most people have heard the saying, “if you want to make God laugh tell Him your plans”. I think it is probably more of a little endearing chuckle followed by a big smile of a loving Father. His plans are sooooo much better, greater, and truly the only way for us to follow Him and be truly happy. As said in Jeremiah, His plans give us a full, rich and worthwhile life. It is a life where we are successful and not by the standards of the world but by His call to love and serve and glorify Him. It is a life where we can truly live as though we were created to do nothing more than love and be loved.
Figuring out those plans is not always easy especially when we put so much into planning and like me are stubborn and convinced we know best. It takes much discernment. It can take someone saying, “What are you doing?!” It can take everything lining up perfectly except certain things that we were convinced were never in God’s plan. It takes taking chances, trusting, and letting go of our pride, need for control, and lack of faith.
Yes, I went to live and work in an orphanage. Yes, it changed my life. Yes, it taught me in so very many ways that God’s plans are not ours. Looking back on my discernment process to join the Salesian Lay Missioners 2.5 years ago is when it all started. As my plans went I had to find an African orphanage. There were no other options and that is where I would be for the next year or more. But, when I found the Salesians God lead my heart first to their mission: seeing Christ in the Face of a Child first, and secondly to their specific sites. If you had asked me months before I applied to the program: do you see yourself going to South America? The answer most likely would have been probably not and secondly do you see yourself learning and becoming fluent in Spanish? The answer would have been “forget about it!” I took five years of French because I didn’t want to take Spanish with everyone else. While my friends would speak Spanish in front of me I would plug my ears and wait till they started speaking English again. Well as God likes to laugh at our plans and oh how much patience He has in our stubbornness. I ended up settling (I say that lightly) for an orphanage in Bolivia, where of course Spanish was the spoken language. Some would call it irony, but I call it God. Along with so many other aspects of my life in Bolivia, Spanish is now a part of my identity, my faith, my world, and my future.
From the moment of God leading me to Bolivia until now God taught me over and over that He was in charge and all I need to do was reach out, grab His hand, and let Him follow. My last few months in Bolivia were so very busy and as I started the New York job search, I thought, I’ve lived in an orphanage for the last two years: I can handle graduate school and working full time. I looked for a family that would be flexible, knowing my school schedule. Finally I was contacted by a woman who said my schedule wasn’t a problem for her. Everything seemed to start to fall together and then she started to help me think about my post-Bolivia perfect “plan.” Being in charge of the medical needs of the girls in the orphanage for the last year and a half had got me thinking about my vocation and what God wanted to teach me through this experience. The head sister, Hermana Rosy at one point looked at me and said “I think your work here shows that you might have a vocation in the medical field.” One of the doctors I often worked with told me that he could see God calling me to be a doctor. I thought perfect, the medical field that is where I am heading.
Heading to graduate school to study Child Life (supporting children in the hospitals) still seemed on track with what these wise people were suggesting. But, as I was advised by my future boss to look more into the graduate school I was heading towards things weren’t fitting. Financially, vocationally, and even practically I started doubting. It went from I am going because it’s my plan, to could God have a different plan for me? Should I be a nurse, PA, or even doctor? to ok, well I’ll go for at least a semester, to I’m moving to New York in one week and I don’t think God wants me to be attending this graduate school, to I have no housing but a job and I still believe God has something to show me, teach me, and for me to do in New York. It was a process that went rather quickly and I truly felt like my life and plans were falling apart and my life being turned upside down. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. But, it was also the most freeing realization letting go of the plans I had held onto and letting God show me that He has something so much better for me.
No matter where we are or what we are doing as long as we love and letting God lead us, we are His. We can find Him in any tabernacle of the world, in others we encounter, and in our own hearts. As I journey from one place to the next sometimes I feel that my heart is in so many places. I leave it in Kirkland anytime I leave home, I left it in Africa when I went there in college, I left it at Gonzaga where God formed my heart and led me to many wonderful people, I left it in Bolivia with my girls and the sisters, and so many other places and people that God has blessed me with the chance to encounter. But when I think about that the line “Let your goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee” from the song Come Thou Font of Every Blessing comes to mind. My heart has wandered from place to place, person to person, experience to experience but in His goodness He has always wandered with me. In feeling my heart being torn in many directions I always feel most at peace in Him and through Him home is wherever He is with me. Often we do so much searching in the world especially when it comes to our planning. God calls us to come back to Him, encounter Him in our hearts, and in that see what His plan is. As St. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” It is so easy to look in other places for that peace, in our plans, in our ideas, in our activities, etc. But, in the end we can only find that in Him, in His love, and in His plans for our lives.
As I continue on the adventure that God is taking me on I don’t know where He will lead me. I don’t know everything that is in His plan. I never will and that is alright. I choose to let Him bind my wandering heart to His and seek Him with all my heart. I know He has never led me astray before. In fact, His plans have always blown mine out of the water and given me the biggest gifts in my life. Although it’s not easy giving up that control it’s worth it always. He blesses each of us with our own story, our own journey with Him and back to Him. Help us Lord to remember You are in control, to trust in Your plan over ours, and find our home in You.
Oct 16, 2014 |
By Misericordia
Today, the Church celebrates the Feast of a Saint very dear to my heart (no pun intended), Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. She spearheaded the promulgation of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (who was spear-hearted!), which was always present in the Church in one form or another but not formally recognized until then.
Before I started telling my own story about leaving the Convent and struggling with my eating disorder, I used to envy others who had seemingly more glorious stories. I thought my story was boring and embarrassing. Later on, however, I learned that my friends and acquaintances thought otherwise. And I soon realized that the Lord was a big fan of my story, not because it was particularly intriguing, but because it was the beginning of the story of my redemption. I started to see my wounded past as salvific, instead of shameful.
And if I can have this kind of experience – that my story is important and that my life has meaning and purpose – then certainly you can too! Each of our lives is so filled to the brim with extra-ordinariness in the midst of ordinariness, with grace in the midst of trial, with love in the midst of fear and pain, and mercy and forgiveness in the midst of apparent failure. So no matter who you are and what you struggle with, those sufferings are valuable gems. They are like the jewels on the Cross that represent the 5 Wounds of Christ. The points of access to redemption and salvation.
I love the images of Saint Thomas the Apostle when the Lord asked him to but his finger in his side, revealing to him and to us the gaping wound in His Side.
It is in His Wounds that we find refuge. There we realize that He knows our pain and our wounds. And as we put our finger into His Side we experience His vulnerability and humility. We realize the boldness of His trust in the Father’s Love that led Him to the Cross, to His seeming abandonment by the Father, and to His suffering and death.
But this wound is not a sign of failure and pain. It is the mark of His glorious Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven. In His Wounded Side we find, for us, the Love of His Sacred Heart, the Mercy He lavishes upon us, and the freedom He offers us in uniting our wounds to His. Yes, in Him we find freedom. Apart from Him there is nothing. When we try to rely on own accomplishments for affirmation and self-worth we end up being trapped under an avalanche of guilt, shame, unworthiness, loneliness, fear, and anxiety. But when we open our wounds to Christ and have the audacity to let Him see us as we really are, broken and in need of so many things, it is then that he pours Himself into us.
And despite the nothingness we may feel at times, the messiness of our life we finally admit to ourselves, and the rawness of the feeling of those wounds, we are finally filled. We no longer have this gaping empty bandaided wound because the Precious Blood of Jesus has finally gained access.
As we celebrate Saint Margaret Mary, who was given the vision of the Sacred Heart and who united her own heart to His, let us make a gift of our wounded hearts to the Lord and see Him graciously accept them, heal them, and care for them.
Sep 15, 2014 |
Imagine. You’ve found the purpose of your being, the meaning of your existence, the reason for living. Then it dies. Literally. This is the suffering of Our Lady. This is the Sorrow of Good Friday that remained when she awoke Saturday morning (if she slept at all), until that glorious Sunday when it was as if life was breathed back again into the world asleep in death.
But the sorrow of Our Lady was not one without gratitude for the “great things” God had done for her, for the gift of the 33 years with Our Lord! She did not cease proclaiming the “greatness of the Lord.”
Nor was this sorrow without the hope of his “promise of mercy… the promise he made to our fathers,” the mercy she recounts in the previous stanzas of her Magnificat.
Today, we are very united to Our Lady, to her sorrows. And yet, this makes us all the more grateful and hopeful of the great gifts and mercies the Lord has and will bestow on us!
It is on this Feast that the Stabat Mater and the Magnificat harmonize in the choirs of Heaven, interwoven by the descant of her Fiat, that first “yes” she proclaimed which gave new life to the world. Let us pray with the sorrows of Our Lady, while also remembering her joyful Magnificat, both extensions of her Fiat.
May we always keep our Fiat as the constant hymn on our lips. May it always be our response in our joys, the “magnificats” in our lives when we can only give gratitude to God, for the “great things” we have received. May it always be our response in the sorrows, the “stabat maters” in life where we are challenged to exercise the virtue of hope in His promises; when our purpose, meaning, and reason for life seem to have been torn from our very hearts, and we are rendered unable to find words to sing praise, except the words of Our Lady, “Let it be done unto me according to thy will,” a prelude to the words of Christ, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” May our thoughts, words, and deeds be a “remix” of their words, a resounding symphony of our own Fiat. May we please the ears of our Father in Heaven, all the Saints and Angels, and especially Our Lady- may they shout “Bravo!” “Encore!” to our “solo,” our unique contribution to the Heavenly Hymn of praise.
Sep 14, 2014 |
Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future, as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.
By Seraphina.
I had a long road leading into the monastery. I believed that God had clearly called me to be His bride and so for several years I prayed and begged that it would be possible for me to enter religious life. The obstacle, however, seemed insurmountable: I had nearly six figures of student loan debt, and I would have to bring that down to zero before I could enter. During those difficult years of working two jobs, praying, and fundraising, I recited to myself the words of 1 Thess 5:24: “He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.” I tried, amidst mounting discouragement, to abandon myself completely to His providence.
Even while working, my income still barely covered my minimum monthly payments. If God really wanted me in the monastery then I needed a miracle. In October I decided to pray the 54 day Rosary novena with the specific intention that I would be able to enter the monastery in June. It seemed like a long shot, but I took heart in simple confidence of the novena prayer, which confidently gives thanks for the grace asked for before it has been received:
From thy bounty thou hast given me the favor
I so earnestly and trustingly sought. I despaired not of what
I asked of thee, and thou hast truly shown thyself my Mother.
This was the hope that I clung to and I made sure to remind Our Lady of it repeatedly. Still, as the months wore on my entrance date seemed increasingly unrealistic. Through the incredible generosity of friends and family I was able to fundraise about 16% of the total that I needed, but at this rate, it would be ten years before I could enter! Still, I tried to hope, truly believing that God would provide for those called according to His purpose.
In May of that year I had one final fundraising event planned: a concert at my parish. It was a simple affair and I looked at it more as an opportunity to offer my violin talent to the parish than as a fundraiser. I entrusted the concert to the Blessed Mother. The concert went well, and afterwards I went to the parish hall for the reception. I was thinking of leaving when suddenly an elderly gentleman approached me and began speaking with me. At length, he put his face near mine and said, “Whisper in my ear the amount of debt that you have.” I told him. He said, “I may be able to help. Write to me. You’ll find my address on the $100 check that I put in the collection basket.”
I wrote to this man and then I prayed another 9 day Rosary novena to back it up. I wasn’t sure if I could believe that this man whom I had just met would be willing to make such an extraordinary gift. I prayed and waited, hoping that this was the miracle that I had been praying for!
It was May, the month of Our Lady, and still Easter; while I was walking home one day I was concluding the ninth Rosary of the novena and the bells were ringing at the church for the Regina Caeli. Just then, my phone rang. It was this gentleman, and he was calling to tell me that he had just spoken with his stockbroker in order to transfer the funds necessary to completely pay off my debt.
“He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.”
I was then able to enter the monastery within two months. The Lord had truly provided for me, just as He had promised, and I rejoiced! I was absolutely overjoyed to be able to enter the monastery after so many tenuous years of waiting. At last! Although nervous, of course, I was so excited to completely commit my life to the Lord and be His forever.
Within minutes of entering the enclosed monastery, however, I began to be plagued by doubts. The Lord, Who had always seemed so near to me, now seemed elusive. I struggled in the small community and I was afflicted by a loneliness that still grieves me to recall. I prayed, I offered sacrifices, and I begged for the strength to live this life, but I felt completely abandoned and alone. I was confused. Surely this must be my fault! Surely God had not worked such a dramatic miracle in my life if I was not actually called to this community! What was I doing wrong? Was I being punished for all of my sins? And what would happen if I left? Wouldn’t it seem like a devious scheme that I had worked just to get my loans paid off and then return to the world? These questions circled in my mind constantly and, not wanting to be unfaithful, I remained in the monastery. I would suffer, I decided, if that was what He wanted. I tried to reflect on the Passion. But who was this God here in the monastery? He did not seem like the same God whom I had loved so ardently before… I had never before felt so abandoned by God, so punished, so… rejected.
The community that I joined lived a very radical vow of poverty. Our personal items were very limited and I was taught not to ask for anything that was not absolutely essential. I had very long hair, because I was saving it for the dramatic ceremony of the investiture where my hair would be cut and replaced by a veil. Until then I had to keep it constrained behind a short postulant veil. I thought that I had brought enough hair ties with me, but midway through the year all but one of them had broken and the one that remained was definitely nearing its end. I know that this sounds trivial but I had some real struggles because of that one hair tie. My hair kept coming loose in awkward moments, it wasn’t secure enough for all of the manual labor that we had to do, and on top of it all, I was afraid to ask my superior for another one. I didn’t have that much longer until my investiture and I really did not want the portress to have to beg one of our benefactors for something as seemingly vain as a hair tie. I did not ask, and every day I rather desperately hoped that my one hair tie would survive.
My interior struggles with the community continued to worsen and I did not have anyone with whom to consult. I was the only one in the novitiate, the community was enclosed, and Mother was already bending the rules in order to allow me to talk privately with a priest about my difficulties. I did not know what I was going to do and it was all I could do to persevere in the daily tasks while trying to appear calm.
One day we received an unexpected package from a lovely woman whom I had met in passing just before I entered. It was a very large box containing all sorts of delights: nuts, washcloths, envelopes, and other essentials. I was really not expecting to hear from this woman and I was deeply moved that she had remembered me and had been so thoughtful. She even mentioned in her card that she had prayed while she was shopping so that she would know exactly what to buy for us.
We had a very fun recreation that evening where Mother allowed me to unpack the box and show everyone what my friend had sent us. Beneath the brownie mix, the seeds, and the gloves, I found… a package of hair ties. They were the exact type that I had always bought, and there were SO MANY of them! My friend knew that the Sisters kept their hair very short, and still she had been moved to buy hair ties for us. You might consider this a coincidence, but in that moment, when I had struggled so much and felt so incredibly far from the providence of God, I knew, I knew that the Lord was truly aware of even our smallest, most trivial needs and I knew that He still loved and cared for me just as much as He always had.
I eventually left the monastery after a great deal of struggles. I learned so much while I was there and I am very grateful to the Sisters for their goodness and patience with me. I was incredibly fearful of returning to the world, at first, and it was so disheartening to think that I may not be called to be the bride of Christ after all. It was all that I could do to entrust this transition to God and try to believe that He does indeed “lead the blind in ways unknown to them” (Is 42:16). I tried to trust again in His providence, more blindly now than ever, and believe that His ways must indeed be mysterious if He would pay off my huge debt in a miraculous way only to ask me to return to the world a year later. But Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and He guides the future as He has the past. His providence had never failed me, so I just had to abandon myself into a new, albeit unexpected, adventure. If He would provide me with something as small as a hair tie, how much more could He be trusted with all of the needs that I would encounter upon leaving the community?
It has been almost a year now since I have left the monastery and I think that my whole experience can only be summed up in one word: gratitude. I am so grateful because the Lord has provided for all of my needs every step of the way. I still don’t know really what He wants me to do five years from now, but I can try to live my life here today with great love. This is the will of God for my life – to give thanks without ceasing, and so even now I think of those hair ties with just as much gratitude as I have when I think of the insurmountable debt that the Lord Himself paid off in a heartbeat.
Deo Gratias!
Seraphina spent over a year discerning with a small enclosed community. She is currently working, spending time with her family, and praising God for His inexhaustible providence.
Aug 27, 2014 |
By Father John Linden, Director of Vocations and Seminarians for the Diocese of Lansing.
It is famously reported that St. Monica suffered a painful and extended period of torment over the worldly ways and sinful pursuits of her wayward son, Augustine. What isn’t so famously reported is that she simultaneously suffered a very difficult marriage to Augustine’s father, Patricius, who was not only unfaithful to her at times but was extremely ill-tempered all of the time. She prayed for both of these men and suffered all of her married life before her husband finally gave his heart over to God and to the faith near the very end of his life, and her son became a Catholic after 35 years of her exhausting, yet determined, prayers. It is reported that at one point, when lamenting to an unnamed bishop about her son’s refusal to convert, that he told her, “The child of those tears shall never perish.”
We can so easily fall into believing that if things don’t go as we hoped in this world, or if God does not answer prayers for truly good things, that he has somehow forgotten us or has abandoned us. However, Monica refused to believe that God would ever do such a thing. She has left us an example of perseverance in prayer and confidence that all prayer and all of our good efforts matter, even if the outcome is delayed or different than what we may have expected.
God was always with St. Monica and proved to her in the end that all she had done and had suffered had meaning and purpose. Our lives have the same meaning when we offer everything to God, including our joys and our sorrows. Every minute of your life is precious to God. So often we can look down the road and see a goal in the future, while missing a goal that is present to us now in the work that God is doing. Even if we can’t yet see or understand this present goal or the meaning of our waiting for our future goals, we can have faith that God is always doing something that is very good. He is with you now and everything that you are and everything that you do now has meaning and purpose even in light of your future desires.
Many of the struggles of the present can bring tears, but those tears will never be in vain which are offered out of love for Jesus who is the Joy of our souls. Monica loved her son and her husband who were the joy of her soul and in the end her wayward men found the Lord in answer to her many tears. In fact, it seems God never missed counting even one tear if we think about what kind of saint her son became and how indebted we are to God for the work he did through Augustine. But that work may have had more to do with St. Monica’s tears than it did with St. Augustine’s study.
God will never miscount any of your tears either. They are all precious to him. If we think about it, in the end Monica became a saint through the gift of her tears which means that what she has most assuredly received now is none other than the true Joy of her soul! She received more in the end than what she sought for in the beginning. All she wanted was the conversion of her husband and son. God also wants more for you than what you now desire and the truth is that tears of hope can sometimes deepen one’s desire for more. So let me say of your tears what a wise man once said to St. Monica, “The desire of those tears shall never parish!”
promises; when our purpose, meaning, and reason for life seem to have been torn from our very hearts, and we are rendered unable to find words to sing praise, except the words of Our Lady, “Let it be done unto me according to thy will,” a prelude to the words of Christ, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” May our thoughts, words, and deeds be a “remix” of their words, a resounding symphony of our own Fiat. May we please the ears of our Father in Heaven, all the Saints and Angels, and especially Our Lady- may they shout “Bravo!” “Encore!” to our “solo,” our unique contribution to the Heavenly Hymn of praise.
In May of that year I had one final fundraising event planned: a concert at my parish. It was a simple affair and I looked at it more as an opportunity to offer my violin talent to the parish than as a fundraiser. I entrusted the concert to the Blessed Mother. The concert went well, and afterwards I went to the parish hall for the reception. I was thinking of leaving when suddenly an elderly gentleman approached me and began speaking with me. At length, he put his face near mine and said, “Whisper in my ear the amount of debt that you have.” I told him. He said, “I may be able to help. Write to me. You’ll find my address on the $100 check that I put in the collection basket.”
very grateful to the Sisters for their goodness and patience with me. I was incredibly fearful of returning to the world, at first, and it was so disheartening to think that I may not be called to be the bride of Christ after all. It was all that I could do to entrust this transition to God and try to believe that He does indeed “lead the blind in ways unknown to them” (Is 42:16). I tried to trust again in His providence, more blindly now than ever, and believe that His ways must indeed be mysterious if He would pay off my huge debt in a miraculous way only to ask me to return to the world a year later. But Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and He guides the future as He has the past. His providence had never failed me, so I just had to abandon myself into a new, albeit unexpected, adventure. If He would provide me with something as small as a hair tie, how much more could He be trusted with all of the needs that I would encounter upon leaving the community?
By Father John Linden, Director of Vocations and Seminarians for the Diocese of Lansing.
love for Jesus who is the Joy of our souls. Monica loved her son and her husband who were the joy of her soul and in the end her wayward men found the Lord in answer to her many tears. In fact, it seems God never missed counting even one tear if we think about what kind of saint her son became and how indebted we are to God for the work he did through Augustine. But that work may have had more to do with St. Monica’s tears than it did with St. Augustine’s study.
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